Summary of Spring 2009 Meeting - ASMFC
 

Some interesting reading:
See attachment

DZ

who harvests horsehoe crabs and why?

Eelvers

Two main uses are medical and for bait. The medical industry uses an extract from them for biomedical research.

lobster fishermen use to use them for bait. the blood is a rare type that the meds use for experiments. been a while but i'm thinking blue.

Yeah Eddie ;;

Blue Blood ;;

Lobster men don,t use the eelers do /

Blount use to payus .25 each .

one digger I know had 800 one night .

I saw a show on TV .. it wasn,t Woods Hole /But someplace in the Carolina,s .
A large company that was extracting the blood ..

It was 85% automated ... they were run on a conveyer belt . setup in a harness a certaim way .. the needle was automated to get the vile of blood out & the crab went down the belt & was dropped in a tank . they were trying to keep the death rate low / but even with that care , they admitted there was some loss ;;

They has already inviewed fisherman that were being put out of business / because someplace down south . that is a large part of their income . Then they inviewed fisherman that use them for bait & how they {??} are trying to comeup with a manmade bait to replace the crab // it was in the testing stage , but the results as of then >were not what they had hoped for ;;:faga:

{C}

Delaware Bay is one of the largest horseshoe crab spawning grounds in the world. Used to employ a good amount of fishermen until the greenies figured out some tiny bird(not the plover) was dependant on the eggs. They closed almost the entire fishery cause the bird was allegedly endangered.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

The red knot

Of the six Calidris canutus subspecies, rufa travels the longest distance, between breeding areas in the Canadian Artic and wintering areas in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.
Although the causes of the population crash are not yet fully understood, the dramatic decline is mainly attributed to the low availability of horseshoe crab eggs in Delaware Bay, USA, a key stopover site for Red Knot Calidris canutus rufa. The lack of eggs has been attributed to an elevated harvest of adult crabs for bait in the conch and eel fishing industries. Studies show that Red Knot individuals with lower body weight at departure in Delaware Bay have lower survival than heavier birds.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0816162204.htm


Amazing travel - Patagonia to the arctic , depends on feeding heavily on horseshoe crab eggs on Delaware Bay.
Excellent Nature show btw

http://wwd.wgbh.org/tv/program/natur...le-two-species